St Helens Data Breach Solicitors – Expert Claims Support
This guide will explain how data breach solicitors for St Helens can help you claim compensation. In the UK, businesses and organisations collect personal data from the public every day. The organisations use the data to operate or for commercial purposes. However, legislation such as the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 requires organisations to protect the data they collect. So, you may be eligible to claim compensation for a GDPR data breach if those who are handling your data fail to put in the necessary steps to protect it.
Data breach solicitors for St Helens
To claim compensation for a potential St Helens’ data breach, please contact Legal Expert today. Our skilled legal team have solid experience handling data breach compensation claims. We can appoint a No Win No Fee solicitor to work on your claim and get you the compensation you deserve. Our skilled data breach solicitors have solid experience handling data breach claims. What’s more, your claim will be valued accurately, so you receive the right amount of money.
Please call us on 0800 073 8804 to begin your claim or to speak with an advisor. Alternatively, you can use our contact form to claim online.
Select A Section
- An Overview Of How Data Breach Solicitors For St Helens Could Help You
- What Are Data Breaches?
- How Could The Data Breach Have Happened?
- How Commonly Do Data Breaches Happen?
- Do Data Breach Victims Need To Claim With Data Breach Solicitors For St Helens?
- What Types Of Data Breach Compensation Can You Claim?
- Should I Claim With No Win No Fee Data Breach Solicitors For St Helens
- Speak To Expert Data Breach Solicitors For St Helens
- Recent Data Breach Guides
An Overview Of How Data Breach Solicitors For St Helens Could Help You
This guide is for people who live in St Helens, who have experienced a data breach. It will explain what laws protect your data in the UK. And we will let you know how a data breach solicitor for St Helens compensation claims can help you. What’s more, we will advise you on what you can do if your data has been breached.
Can you get compensation for a data breach? Personal data breaches can mean your private and sensitive information is exposed which can cause stress and mental harm. Moreover, criminals may use your breached data to target you for fraudulent activities. So, if you have suffered emotional distress or financial losses because of a data breach, you may be eligible to claim compensation. However, we must state that not every data breach victim will be eligible to claim compensation. The claimant will have to prove that those who should have been protecting their personal data failed to take the right procedures.
Is there a time limit on starting a data breach claim? Yes. The time limit to claim compensation for a data breach is six years. But the time limit is one year if the data breach claim is against a public body. So please call our helpline, and we can determine how long you have to claim.
What Are Data Breaches?
Personal data is information that identifies a person, such as your name, address and date of birth. Businesses and other organisations that collect personal data to operate are known as data controllers. For example, a school may collect personal data on employees, students and other key stakeholders. Those who provide personal information are known as data subjects. If an organisation collects personal data, they are legally required to safeguard it.
A personal data breach can happen as the result of a security incident that means personal information has been, lost, disclosed, accessed, destroyed, altered, without authority and no lawful basis. Not all data breaches happen because of deliberate and malicious actions, some or most can happen because of human error. Data breach solicitors for St Helens could handle all sorts of data breach claims. Here are some examples of data breaches:
- An organisation grants unauthorised persons access to personal data
- An email containing medical information is sent to the wrong recipient.
- A data controller does not have up to date cyber security which means a hacker can exploit their systems and access personal information.
- Personal data is not redacted when a case study is uploaded to the internet.
Data Privacy Protection Laws
There are data protection laws in the UK that safeguard your data privacy. The General Data Protection Regulation is a piece of EU data protection legislation that was enacted into UK law through the Data Protection Act 2018. However, the UK is no longer under the rulings of the EU so the UK adapted the Data Protection Act 2018 and introduced UK GDPR.
Organisations are supposed to protect the personal data they collect under the UK GDPR. Therefore if an organisation fails to put in the necessary steps and procedures to protect this data, a data subject whose personal information was exposed may be eligible to claim compensation. On the flip side if an organisation/data controller has done all they can to protect this identifiable data a claim would be less likely.
How Could The Data Breach Have Happened?
Let’s look at some examples of data security incidents that have happened in St Helen’s.
The St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust data was breached in 2017 and affected hundreds of trainee doctors. The error happened when the St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust posted nearly 500 trainee doctors’ details on its website. As a result, the following information may have been available:
- The doctor’s names
- Home addresses
- Mobile phone numbers
- Email addresses
- National Insurance numbers
Resource – www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/hundreds-trainee-doctors-addresses-personal-13412555
Other Types Of Data Breaches
Data breach solicitors for St Helens could also handle data breach claims caused by the following:
- An email data breach is when an email containing personal information is sent to the wrong recipient.
- A wrong postage address data breach could happen if a letter containing personal data is sent to the wrong postal address.
- A bank could fail to take adequate cybersecurity precautions. Consequently, if hackers target the bank, they could access the customer’s financial information.
- A Police data breach could happen if the police improperly dispose of files regarding previous investigations.
- A nursery data breach could happen if a nursery sends a mass email without using the Bcc field.
If you have had your data breached, please get in touch with Legal Expert. We can provide you with a data breach lawyer to handle your compensation for a GDPR data breach.
How Commonly Do Data Breaches Happen?
It is hard to estimate how often data breaches take place. The Government has published the Cyber Security Breaches Survey. Subsequently, the survey gives us insight into how common cyber security breaches and attacks are. Those that took part in the 2021 survey demonstrated 39% of businesses and 26% of charities had experienced a cyber security breach or attack in the past year. However, not all of these cyber security breaches involved personal data.
If an organisation discovers a data breach, it should report it to the Information Commissioner’s Office if a data subject rights are affected. The ICO will then investigate the data breach and may enforce a fine. The ICO’s data security incident trends show that the ICO received 2,431 reports of data security incidents in Q2 2021/22. Of these incidents, 714 were related to cyber security breaches.
Do Data Breach Victims Need To Claim With Data Breach Solicitors For St Helens?
If you have been the victim of a data breach, you may be eligible to claim compensation. There are many advantages to appointing a data breach solicitor for St Helens to work on your claim if you want to. The solicitor can accurately value your claim. Furthermore, your solicitor can negotiate with the defendant, so you receive the right amount of compensation.
What should you do after a data breach? If you believe an organisation has breached your data, contact them. The data protection team should be able to solve the matter for you. If you are not satisfied with these efforts, you can complain to the ICO. But, please do not wait more than three months from the last contact with the data controller to contact the ICO because they usually won’t investigate a complaint that is older than that.
What Types Of Data Breach Compensation Can I Claim?
As data breaches can expose information that is personal and private to you the effects can be both distressing and you can experience financial losses.
Moreover, some people will develop psychological injuries such as depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). So they may need counselling to come to terms with their trauma. Unfortunately, data breaches also expose personal data to an insecure environment. Consequently, people can misuse the data for malicious purposes. For example, a criminal may steal a victim’s identity and defraud them. So, data breaches can also lead to financial losses.
You can claim up to two heads of claim for a data breach:
- Firstly, you can receive material damages for any money or assets lost because of the data breach.
- Secondly, you can receive non-material damages for any psychiatric injuries or emotional distress experienced—for example, chronic stress, anxiety or depression.
If you wonder how much compensation you can get for a GDPR data breach call our claims team our advisors can assess your claim with accuracy.
The compensation amounts in the table are based on Judicial College guidelines. So, the table focuses on non-material damages you could potentially claim. But please note that when you make a data breach claim, the amount of compensation you receive will vary as each and every case is unique to its own circumstances.
| Psychiatric Injury And Severity | Possible Compensation | About The Psychiatric Injury |
|---|---|---|
| Less Severe Psychiatric harm | Up to £5,500 | Settlements account for factors such as the effect upon the claimant’s daily life, such as whether they still experience symptoms and if they have a normal sleep pattern. |
| Moderate Psychiatric harm | £5,500 – £17,900 | Settlements account for the problems this person may have with various parts of their life such as education or relationships. They will have experienced significant issues but should have a good outlook for recovering. |
| Moderately Severe Psychiatric harm | £17,900 – £51,460 | Settlements account for the claimant having experienced problems with multiple parts of their daily life. They do have a better prognosis than those below. |
| Severe Psychiatric harm | £51,460 – £108,620 | Settlements account for the claimant still experiencing marked issues in multiple parts of their life and for the fact any prognosis for recovery is poor. |
Should I Claim With A No Win No Fee Data Breach Solicitors For St Helens?
If you wish to claim compensation for a potential St Helens’ data breach, you could have the option of funding your solicitor with a No Win No Fee agreement. No Win No Fee data breach solicitors for St Helens may offer to work for you under a Conditional Fee Agreement CFA. The CFA will set out what conditions must be achieved in order for you to pay the solicitor their fees.
If the No Win No Fee solicitor loses your case you pay them nothing in fees. Should you win your case your solicitor will charge you a success fee. You will formalise this process by signing a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA).
Here are some of the advantages of choosing a No Win No Fee solicitor:
- Your success fee is deducted from your compensation payout at a legally capped rate. So you will receive the majority of your data breach compensation settlement if your claim is successful.
- You are not risking paying a solicitors fee and not getting anything back because you will only pay your success fee if your claim is successful.
- Your data breach solicitor will not charge you an upfront fee. So, you don’t have to worry about finding the funds to pay for your solicitor upfront.
Please read our online No Win No Fee compensation claims guide to learn more.
Speak To Expert Data Breach Solicitors For St Helens
We hope that this guide to working with data breach solicitors for St Helens has helped you. Please use the details below to contact Legal Expert. A claims advisor will be happy to answer any questions you may have. And, if you have legitimate grounds to claim, we can appoint a No Win No Fee solicitor to work on your case.
Contact Legal Expert today:
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- Call our helpline on 0800 073 8804. Our advisers will be happy to discuss your data breach claim with you.
- Use our online claims form to reach us.
- Or get 24-hour support using the Live Chat widget on the bottom right-hand corner of your screen.
Recent Data Breach Guides
Should a St Helens Borough Council Data Breach occur would it mean personal data has been leaked?
If a University of Liverpool data breach happened would you know what action to take?
Your data matters – guides to keeping your data safe from the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Can you access information about your exam results? – A guide from the Information Commissioner’s Office.
A UK Government guide to your data protection rights.
If you have experienced a breach of your data, help is at hand.
Please get in touch with us today to start your data breach claim.
Thank you for reading our guide to data breach solicitors for St Helens. We hope it has been informative.
